2022 - 11/2022 Meeting

Page Created: 09/26/22. Last Updated: 11/20/22.

MEMBER PROGRAM

Books Read / Movies View by Members

Basics of Science Fiction Convention Masquerade Costumes by John Upton

Library Resources by Kathy Cannaorozzi

Faerie Tales & Super Hero Pincesses by Philip De Parto

Meeting Date: November 12 2022.

Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Attendance: 20 + 5.

Meeting Program: Talks / Discussions by Members.

Notes:

Newsletter Account:

The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County returned to its traditional meeting space at the Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey after a five month absence on Saturday, November 12, 2022. It was not our finest hour, but we muddled through and may have learned something that will help us in future meetings.

The set-up went smoothly, with Pamela Webber doing her usual efficient kitchen prep and Yaron Habot, one of our four first-timers at the meeting, helping Phil and Pam with the unloading of the club books. People grabbed enough free books that we were able to reduce the load by two boxes. Well done, folks!

Pam brought in her laptop and had planned to show and talk about some cartoons at the pre-meeting Ice Nine discussion, but the Church's internet was wonky. We'll come back to this later. Turnout was good and the discussion went rather well.

Sometime around 6:20 PM, we received a message from Brian Trent, the night's speaker. His car had broken down on the highway and he would be unable to join us. Fortunately, it happened in Connecticut, so he was relatively close to home instead of two states away. He was very apo.ogetic and has been rescheduled to our April 2023 meeting.

We officially started the meeting at 8:00 PM, informing everyone we had lost our speaker and would conduct an improvised program. There were the usual spate of announcements and then it was off to the races.

The first part of the meeting had each person in the audience mentioning a genre book, movie, or television show they had recently seen or read. A few people from our zoom feed also chimed in for this. I was too busy to take notes, but do remember that a couple of people spoke highly about BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER.

The second part of the program was two short (5 - 10 minutes) talks with Q & A. The first was by John Upton and concerned costumes and masquerades at science fiction conventions. John has given presentations on the subject to the group in the past, but on this occasion he had no time to prepare a slide show or bring photographs. He did a good job covering the basics and plans to bring a couple of photo albums to the December meeting so that people can see what he talked about. Kathy Cannarozzi, the Director of the Rochelle Park Public Library, talked about electronic resources libraries carry for their patrons. Different libraries subscribe to different services, but almost every facility has some combination of ebooks, audio books, movies, and television series which can be downloaded at no charge to the user. There may be additional services available, depending on the town.

We took our usual recess around 9:15 PM, so no one was manning the laptop when we lost our internet access. By the time we noticed and reestablished a connection (thank you, Kathy!) the zoomers had gone on to other things.

We concluded with Philip De Parto talking about his Princess Protectors series, This is a collection of inter-related stories set in a world where Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel are superheroes who battle the forces of evil. He talked about how he got the idea (Samuel L Jackson told him to write it in a vision), how their superpowers work, and a bit about faerie tales in general.

Our thanks to Kathy Cannarozzi, Claire Fisher, and Yaron Habot for technical assistance, Kathy and John for sharing their expertise, to Pam for running the Ice Nine and kitchen duty, for Chuck for the refreshments, to Yaron for loading and unloading the cars, and all who attended, took books, or helped in any other way.